Here Without Me Version 2
by Hado82
Summary: You will never be here without me." - MUCH happier ending than the first one, I can promise you that...sort of.


Disclaimer: Don't own Flame of Recca. So don't sue me.

A/N: Characters are OOC in this one-shot, you have been forewarned.

This is dedicated to one of my most beloved best friends in the entire world Silver Dreams on Golden Wings.

Edit 14/8/08: This is officially Version 2.5. Sort of. MS-chan, where are you when I need you?

Disclaimer applied - **I don't own Flame of Recca.**

**Here Without Me**

"_Do you love me?"_

"_I'd die for you."_

"_Are you lying?"_

"_Of course not."_

"_Would you sacrifice your life for my happiness?"_

"_Undoubtedly."_

--

He smiled bitterly when he recalled that joyful moment. He'd thought it'd be everlasting happiness to be living forever with the girl he loved, the girl he wanted more than anything on Earth.

He had been wrong.

--

"_How long has this been going on behind my back?" Barely concealed anger was evident in his words._

_She looked down, feeling guilty. "Four months in the least."_

_The silence that followed was almost deafening. Then, "How could you do this to me? Why? Do you want me __dead__?"_

_Looking at him, face full with pain, she gulped. "He loves me more than you ever could."_

_His expression was aghast when he turned to face her. "How can you __say__ that? I loved you more than life itself!"_

"_You don't, and you never did! You left me alone without anyone to care for while you went around doing God knows what!"_

_Their voices were raised to yelling now, her pitch high and his low growling._

"_It's called __work__."_

"_Even so, __he__ worked and yet __he__ still made time for me! Did you?"_

"_Does it __matter__? I'm earning a living for us both!"_

"_Yes, it __does__ matter!"_

_Raw venom pierced through their hearts. The 6th fight they'd had in two days. Anger shone in his eyes, unwanted tears in hers._

"_Forget it. Just forget it." He turned away, starting to walk towards the door._

"_We have too much difference."_

_Her sharp tone of voice made him pause in his tracks. Turning around to glance at her over his shoulder, he remarked in a icy voice, "So where do we go from here?"_

_For the first time since the argument started, she looked him directly in the eye. "Divorce."_

--

Currently, they were still waiting for the divorce papers to be signed, and then it'd be official. Until then, she was still living in his apartment, but his presence was no longer acknowledged. It was as if he was never once her best friend, never her lover, never her husband.

His words haunted him everyday. Every single day, he tried to start a conversation with her, because he couldn't take it. Those words would come back every so often to refresh themselves in his mind. _I'd die for you._

There was not a moment of doubt or hesitation when he'd answered her question.

_Would you sacrifice your life for my happiness?_

And he'd said,

_Undoubtedly_.

--

_She sat on the bed, musing as she reconsidered her decision to break up with her husband permanently._

"_You know how you said you'd sacrifice your life for my happiness?"_

_He glanced over at her, hoping this conversation was not going with he thought it was heading to. "Yes?"_

"_Would you really do it, or did you just say that?"_

"_I'd really do it."_

_She smiled grimly. "You're just saying it."_

"_If you return to me, I will."_

_She shook her head stubbornly, eyes brimming with tears. "It can never be the same again."_

"_We'll start over, I swear we'll get along this time, just __please__-"_

"_No. We can't." She looked up at him, allowing the tears to drip down her smooth cheekbones._

"_Why not? I __swear__ I'll-"_

"_He's asked me to marry him."_

_There was a momentary pause. "And you accepted?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper._

_Another pause followed this statement - for it was more a statement compared to a question. And, just as soft, she replied:_

"_Yes."_

--

He stared at them, together at last outside the window. His face was wistful, paler than it had ever been. He had hardly eaten these few days, but the pain of hunger did not surpass the pain of being alone.

_I'd die for you._

She did not need him anymore, and that realization made him feel isolated, and so lonely. He could see her face - radiant with joy, and a fierce loving towards her new fiancé.

_Would you sacrifice your life for my happiness? Undoubtedly._

She didn't need him anymore. She didn't want him anymore. All she needed was _him_, that fool who took her away from him.

--

"_Why __him__?" he asked, trying to suppress the pain he felt._

"_Because I can see he truly does love me," was her curt reply, and she averted her eyes, gazing down at the marble floor instead of him._

"_I do, too!"_

"_Oh, shut up with the questions! Just go jump into a lake or something!" she had screamed, rushing to her room to break down into sobs._

--

She never needed him from the beginning. She didn't want him the same way he wanted her anymore. And she loved someone else now.

Numbness filled the rising pain in his chest that tied it in tight knots. His breath came in short gasps as he walked down to the kitchen, knowing fully well now what to do.

--

"_We'll __make__ things the way it was. Without him, without anyone else but ourselves."_

"_Don't you __understand__? It will __never__ ever be the same anymore!"_

_Thumps on the table was accompanied by the sound of glass crashing down as they continued to argue amongst themselves, and him against the reality of their situation._

--

He wanted it to go back, all back to the way it was before _he_ entered her life. Before _he_ took over her love.

But the futility of it all was too painstakingly obvious.

They would _never_ become the center of each other's lives again.

He selected a knife, so sharp that it would steal drops of blood at the bare interaction with soft flesh.

And closed his eyes, positioning the weapon so that he could die quickly.

--

"_Would you be able to live without me?"_

"_No," he replied, before glancing curiously at her. A bride shouldn't be asking that on her wedding night. "Why'd you ask?"_

_She grinned lazily, lying on the bed. "Just checking. Because I know I'd never be able to live without __you__."_

_--_

Kirisawa Fuuko was glanced at her husband's still form, his chiseled features, his lithe figure, through the thin white sheets, and clutched his slender fingers through hers tightly, before picking his hand up and kissing his knuckles lovingly. She knew he was having yet another one of his nightmares - the ones he frequently experienced ever since he had been diagnosed with that mental disorder she couldn't ever remember the name of.

His forehead was sweating, she noted, as she fingered the outlines of his handsome face. And, not for the first time, she felt anger grip at her heart - for being so helpless, to just sit here and watch him as he crossed the border towards somewhere akin to insanity. Or at least, that was what she had registered through the doctors.

The mention of her name from the lips of Mikagami Tokiya nearly made her jump. "Fuuko..."

"Mi-chan?" she yelped, stunned. The doctors had analyzed his brain, and whatever amnesia he had been going through ever since he was ill, and had told her that he wouldn't be able to recall anything whatsoever, from the very moment she and Raiha had found him on the kitchen floor with copious amounts of blood pooling underneath his head, and a clean knife in his hands. The knife had been forgotten, although she later deciphered its meaning, as they rushed him to the hospital and found that he had been shot in the head by some unknown assassin.

And the knife...

...he had been about to kill himself.

"Don't leave me," he whispered, his face registering an expression of anguish.

All those arguments she had - leading to some rash decision for divorce, she mused, as she took his cold hand into her own. It didn't matter anymore, she decided. Even the doctors' predicaments of how bleak a future Tokiya had didn't matter.

"I won't," she promised. "You'll never be here without me."

All she wanted to be was next to him, with the knowledge that he loved her.

And that she loved him.


End file.
